As early as next month, food manufacturers may start using the USDA-approved “Bioengineered” symbol to disclose the presence of GMO ingredients in their packaged goods labeled for retail sale.

Under a Final Rule issued Dec. 19, 2018 by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), food manufacturers, importers, and certain retailers must disclose the presence of foods or ingredients made from genetic engineering when the bioengineered portion exceeds 5 percent by weight of each ingredient. Companies may voluntarily disclose smaller amounts of bioengineered foods or ingredients by using a USDA-approved “Derived from Bioengineering” symbol.

Mandatory disclosure for food manufacturers starts Jan. 1, 2022. Very small manufacturers (having less than $2.5 million in annual sales) and restaurants are exempt. Companies can voluntarily begin disclosure starting Feb. 19, 2019, when the Final Rule takes effect.

The Final Rule implements the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law (PL 114-216), which was signed into law in July 2016. It requires food manufacturers to prominently disclose on the label the presence of bioengineered ingredients.

The new standard “ensures clear information and labeling consistency for consumers about the ingredients in their food,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “The standard also avoids a patchwork state-by-state system that could be confusing to consumers.”

Under the Final Rule, which went through a lengthy proposal and revision process, highly refined foods or ingredients, such as oils or sugars that were derived from bioengineered crops but which do not contain detectable levels of modified genetic material are not considered bioengineered. Meat and milk from animals that consumed bioengineered feed are also exempt from disclosure. Products certified under USDA’s National Organic Program are exempt because they already must not contain any bioengineered ingredients.

Four Disclosure Methods

Food manufacturing companies (including makers of dietary supplements) can make disclosure by one of these four methods:

An electronic or digital link accompanied by a statement such as “Scan here for more food information” accompanied by a telephone number;

The statement “Text [command word] to [number] for bioengineered food information” followed by an immediate text message sent to the consumer’s mobile device with the bioengineered food disclosure.

Additional options such as a phone number or web address are available to small food manufacturers and for small and very small packages.

USDA discarded an earlier label disclosure proposal of “May Be Bioengineered.” The agency adopted the 5 percent threshold amount for disclosure because of the “reality” that bioengineered and non-bioengineered production systems coexist, and that “inadvertent or technically unavoidable” inclusion can occur. A lower threshold, such as 0.9 percent, as some other countries have adopted, “may increase the regulatory burden for producers and food processors,” with increased compliance costs passed on to consumers, USDA explained.

As to be expected, the Final Rule elicited divergent reactions from consumer and industry stakeholders. The Grocery Manufacturers Association praised USDA for making a “sound decision to empower the industry.”

“Disclosure is imperative to increasing transparency, educating consumers, and building trust of brands, the food industry, and government,” says Karin Moore, GMA’s senior vice president and general counsel. “We are pleased that the USDA has now provided a structure for our companies to share this information voluntarily, building a foundation for government to more quickly respond to innovation in food and agriculture in the future.”

While the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is “generally supportive” of the Final Rule, Gregory Jaffe, its biotechnology director, says some provisions are “not in the best interest of consumers.”

Specifically, CSPI would have preferred “genetically engineered” to “bioengineered” because the latter is unfamiliar to most consumers. Additionally, CSPI disagreed with exempting highly processed ingredients derived from genetically engineered crops from mandatory disclosure, and would have preferred making the “Derived from Bioengineering” disclosure mandatory instead of voluntary.

Organic farming started as a small and simple movement frequently associated with 1960s hippies and back-to-the-landers, but today organic food has grown into a complicated big business, reaching a broad array of consumer plates through all types of retailers and raising questions about the accuracy of product labels.

Organic produce accounts for at least 5.5 percent of the food Americans buy from retailers, according to the Organic Trade Association. In a May 2018 survey, the Washington, D.C., trade association found organic food sales in the U.S. rose 6.4 percent from 2016 to 2017 to hit a new record of $45.2 billion.

And organic food is no longer only available in specialty health food stores. Online websites and big-box stores like Walmart and Costco have joined traditional organic food sellers including Whole Foods, which itself last year was purchased by Amazon. Each is selling billions of dollars’ worth of organic food per year through extensive distribution webs, according to The Balance Small Business website.

“Organic has arrived. And everyone is paying attention,” Laura Batcha, CEO and executive director of the Organic Trade Association, said in a prepared statement in May, when the organization released its market study.

“Our survey shows there are now Certified Organic products in the marketplace representing all stages of the life cycle of a product or a company—from industry veterans to start-ups that are pioneering leading-edge innovation and benefits and getting shelf space for the first time,” she says. “Consumers love organic, and now we’re able to choose organic in practically every aisle in the store.”

Consumers who buy organic food typically will pay more for it because of its perceived health benefits. Some will fork an extra 20 percent or more for fresh organic vegetables, according to The Hartman Group, Bellevue, Wash., a food and beverage research company.

But the growing desire for organic food, the broad array of places to buy it, and the hundreds of organic items for sale at any given retailer are causing growing pains for the organic industry and consumers.

That includes a public debate over the accuracy and usefulness of product labels. Some experts argue that many consumers are trying to eat healthy, but are confused over exactly what it is they are buying.

Organic Confusion

There is widespread misunderstanding about all types of food among consumers, Michigan State University finds in its Food Literacy and Engagement Poll in 2017. For example, more than one-third of Americans do not know that foods without genetically modified ingredients still contain genes as part of their makeup, as do all foods.

In the first of two 2018 polls, the university found that consumers consider labels very important to what they buy. Some 61 percent of respondents say labels are influential or very influential in their food-buying decisions. And 53 percent say they avoid eating foods that contain chemicals.

“I think from polling we see that most Americans are misinformed or disengaged when it comes to food and what the information on the labels means,” says Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-author of the Michigan State University Food Literacy and Engagement polls.

“Labels are being used to market a product, but they’re also being used for information about it, so they’re making people confused,” she says. “Most people don’t know what ‘organic’ means.”

But that doesn’t stop shoppers from seeking organic products. The university’s second poll of 2018, due out to the public in the fall, finds that 53 percent of American’s polled will check a label for the word “organic.”

Some 56 percent say they buy organic food. The most popular reason is that they think it is healthier. They also say it is more natural, avoids pesticides, avoids GMOs, is safer, is better for them, and is better for animal welfare. Others cite family and friends or doctors as steering them toward organic foods.

The forthcoming poll found people who don’t buy organic think it is too expensive or isn’t any healthier or safer than conventional food.

Millennials turn out to value organics the most, buying more organic food and willingly paying higher prices for it.

Labeling: What’s in a Word?

With so many choices of organic foods—more than 400 alone to buy at Walmart, for example—and so much money at stake, some experts question whether marketers are taking advantage of overwhelmed consumers with ingredients included on their labels.

The controversy over labels has been brewing for several years, but it came to a head in August with an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal by Henry Miller, MS, MD, a former FDA official who, among other things, founded that organization’s Office of Biotechnology. Dr. Miller is now the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

In the Journal’s opinion piece entitled “The Organic Industry is Lying to You,” Dr. Miller asserts that FDA is uneven in its policing of organic labels. As an example, he wrote that FDA warned a Massachusetts bakery about including the word “love” in its ingredient’s list. And the Whole Foods website, he said, claims organic foods are grown “without toxic or persistent pesticides.” Dr. Miller wrote that organic farmers do sometimes rely on synthetic and natural pesticides to grow their crops. Some of the pesticides are produced by the plants to defend themselves.

One of Dr. Millet’s biggest complaints was the so-called “absence claims”—for instance, labeling a food like orange juice that has no fat to begin with as “fat free.” Dr. Miller wrote that FDA usually comes down hard on such claims because to claim something is absent it must be present in the first place.

He said the non-GMO label is a particular offender in labeling, for example, there is a non-GMO label on Hunt’s canned crushed tomatoes even though there are no genetically modified organism tomatoes on the market.

“The organic industry isn’t hiding anything,” wrote Cameron Harsh, organic and animal programs director at the Center for Food Safety, in a response to Dr. Miller’s commentary. “The truth is organic farming has a baseline prohibition of harmful chemicals. Transparent processes are required by law allowing certain synthetic products to be used only when all other measures have failed.

“They must go through rigorous, public review to prove their use ‘would not be harmful to human health or the environment’ and must be re-reviewed every five years,” he added. “We aren’t being duped; choosing organic is the best way to reduce dietary exposure to pesticides.”

Batcha of the Organic Trade Association wrote that food with the USDA organic label is rigorously monitored. “No other agricultural system operates under the comprehensive and rigorous set of federal regulations and standards by which organic farmers choose willingly to abide,” she said in her response.

Dr. Miller responded to their letters a couple of weeks later in The Wall Street Journal, quoting Dan Glickman, who was agriculture secretary in 2000 when the federal organic standards were approved.

“I am proud to say these are the strictest, most comprehensive organic standards in the world,” Glickman said in 2000.

Although Glickman embraced organic food, saying he sometimes buys organic frozen foods, The Washington Post said he made clear that the new organic seal does not imply the organic foods are either safer or more nutritious.

“The organic label is a marketing tool,” he said at the time. “USDA is not in the business of choosing sides, of stating preferences for one kind of food, one set of ingredients or one means of production over any other.”

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, also weighed in on Dr. Miller’s comments via Twitter, saying he soon would release more detailed information on what different terms mean on food packaging to help consumers best use claims like organic and antibiotic free.

In other tweets, Dr. Gottlieb said the FDA and USDA have different roles in the oversight of organic foods. USDA regulates use of the term “organic” on food labels, while FDA oversees general food labeling compliance and food safety issues.

USDA became responsible for regulatory oversight of organic standards and accreditation of organic certifying agents under the National Organic Program (NOP), which was signed into law in 2000. The USDA Organic seal was subsequently introduced. Today, there are more than 24,000 certified organic operations throughout the U.S., according to the Organic Trade Association.

It is unclear to what extent the booming market for organic foods may be overloading certification operations.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), the largest of 15 certifiers in that state, had to stop accepting new certifications in August 2017 because of the large volume of applications. It certifies 260 operations as organic. In August 2017, the number of certified organic food operations ISDA was handling was up 40 percent from four years before. It hired more inspectors in 2016, 2017, and this year.

“There was so much growth and we wanted to make sure certification was done correctly for our current clients, so we placed a temporary cap on new applications,” says ISDA organic program manager Gwen Ayres. She says it is unclear when ISDA will be able to lift the cap.

Organic growers can still try to get certified by other organizations, she says.

Is the USDA Organic Label Enough?

While the USDA Organic label intends to define in detail what is or isn’t organic food, advances in agriculture, food preparation, and internationalization all have conspired to challenge traditional definitions. A number of organic farmers also want to consider environmental impacts of organic practices in labeling.

Some organic food contains trace amounts of non-organic food parts, like spices, which are allowable up to a certain percentage. Also in question are growing techniques such as hydroponics, a process used to grow vegetables in water with nutrients.

The Real Organic Project, based in East Thetford, Vt., wants an add-on label to the USDA Organic label. The group of organic farmers says there are a lot of good things about the USDA NOP rules. But it objects to rules that allow hydroponics and concentrated animal feeding operations to be certified as organic. It announced a pilot farm inspection program in July.

“But the farm products from a tiny minority of factory farms now being certified are at odds with the original intent of organic farming,” the project’s website says. “Unfortunately, these few factories produce a large and growing proportion of the food labeled organic on the market today.”

Another effort was announced in March by the Rodale Institute, Dr. Bronner’s, Patagonia, and others that are members of the Regenerative Organic Alliance.

The alliance launched its Regenerative Organic Certification program in March. It, too, looks for an organic standard focused on soil health and ecological land management, pasture-based animal welfare, and fairness to farmers and workers.

And some farmers and food producers are using new technology to improve yields. For example, USDA is in the process of reviewing comments on labeling for foods that may be bioengineered.

Gwendolyn Wyard, the OTA’s vice president of technical and regulatory affairs, stands by the USDA as the standards-keeper for organic products.

“Unlike other eco-labels and add-on claims, the USDA Organic label is the only one that is backed by a federal standard, third-party certification and federal oversight,” she writes in an email response to questions from Food Quality & Safety. She says the standards provide full traceability from farm to table.

She adds that the OTA does welcome efforts to improve agricultural practices through standards development. OTA, she says, supports Rodale, for example, for recognizing USDA Organic as the foundation and baseline requirement for its regenerative organic agriculture standard.

“It is critical that add-on labels serve as a mechanism to support the organic standards rather than compete with organic,” she says. “The use of add-on labels should not devalue the organic existing standards and all the hard work that goes into the rigorous practices and certification requirements.”

One challenge for the organic industry under the current administration is a scale-back on the USDA’s efforts to engage in organic standards development, Wyard says.

“This is a challenge for the organic sector, and is also at the root cause for the add-on label schemes we see emerging,” she says. “Although the intent is valuable, multiple certifications, audits, and inspections are a perennial challenge, particularly for farmers.”

She says shoppers can get label fatigue with all the standards and become even more confused.

“The OTA stresses the importance of ensuring that additive certification schemes and label statements will not inadvertently confuse consumers and lead to a misconception that the organic standards do not cover fundamental requirements such as soil health and animal welfare,” she says.

Monsanto Co. will fund a new U.S. company that aims to develop crops using technology known as gene editing, rather than the genetic modification that helped it become the world’s biggest seed seller.

Monsanto’s vice president of global biotechnology, Tom Adams, will leave the seed giant to become chief executive of the new firm, called Pairwise Plants, the companies told Reuters. He steps into the new role on April 1.

The collaboration accelerates a race among agricultural scientists and companies worldwide to develop new seeds for crops using gene editing, a process they say can produce non-GMO farm products that do not contain foreign DNA from a different species.

Unlike traditional GMOs, in which a gene is added from another organism, gene-editing works like the find-and-replace function on a word processor. It finds a gene and then makes changes by amending or deleting it.

Using “molecular scissors” to cut DNA means scientists can edit genomes more precisely and rapidly than ever before, and altered agricultural products could get to market more quickly and cheaply.

Monsanto, famous for engineering soybeans to resist the weed killer Roundup, will pay Pairwise $100 million over the next five years to finance research on gene editing tools, Adams said in an interview.

Pairwise will also research how to use the tools to alter commodity crops, including corn, soy, wheat, cotton and canola, exclusively for Monsanto, according to the companies. The deal allows Monsanto, which is being acquired by Bayer AG, to commercialize products from the partnership.

“The collaboration really will help accelerate the development of the technology,” said Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer.

Separately, Monsanto’s venture capital arm, along with investment firm Deerfield Management, each committed $12.5 million to form Pairwise as part of a Series A financing round, according to Pairwise.

Among Pairwise’s founders is David Liu, a Harvard University professor who pioneered a new form of gene editing that the company said allows scientists to make more precise changes to plant genomes.

Pairwise aims to hire up to 100 people in its first two years, said Haven Baker, who will be chief business officer. Baker formerly worked for McDonald’s Corp. potato supplier J.R. Simplot Company on the development of a biotech potato.

Beyond commodity crops, Pairwise intends to use gene editing for research on other plants, possibly including fruit.

“We want to make food crops more convenient, affordable, and sustainable,” Baker said.

A rice genetically modified (GMO) by Chinese researchers to resist pests has passed safety inspections by authorities in the U.S., allowing for its sale there even though Beijing continues to prohibit planting of any GMO food grain.

The rice, known as Huahui 1, was developed by a team at Huazhong University in central Hubei province to resist pests like the rice stem borer. While Chinese authorities granted the strain a safety certificate in 2009, it has never been approved for commercial production.

Beijing has spent billions of dollars researching GMO crops but has held back from commercial production of any food grains because of consumer concerns about their safety. Validation of the country’s GMO safety testing and products by U.S. authorities could help persuade the government and consumers in China to accept the products at home.

The U.S. FDA notified the research team at Huazhong last week that it agreed with university’s safety and nutritional assessments on the product, Huazhong said in a statement on January 21 on its website.

“Genetically engineered Huahui No.1 rice grain does not raise issues that would require premarket review or approval by FDA,” according to a letter posted on the FDA website that Huazhong highlighted in its statement.

The product had earlier passed a review by the EPA on pesticide residue levels, Huazhong said, clearing the way for the export of Huahui 1 rice and rice products to the U.S. market.

However, the university would need further approval from the USDA for planting the rice. The statement did not say if researchers would seek such approval.

But Huazhong said the approvals from the FDA and EPA further validated the test methods and evaluation carried out by Chinese institutes to assess safety and nutrient levels in the new rice.

China has said it aims to push forward the commercialization of GMO corn and soybeans by 2020 but has not made public any plans to approve planting of GMO rice, the country’s most important staple food.

]]>https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/u-s-gives-safety-approval-chinese-genetically-modified-rice-strain/feed/0USDA Confirms Unapproved GMO Wheat in Washington Statehttps://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/usda-confirms-unapproved-gmo-wheat-washington-state/
https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/usda-confirms-unapproved-gmo-wheat-washington-state/#respondSat, 30 Jul 2016 10:30:24 +0000http://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/?post_type=article&p=18003Genetically modified wheat developed by Monsanto and never approved by regulators has been found growing in Washington state farm field

Genetically modified wheat developed by Monsanto Co., and never approved by federal regulators, has been found growing in a Washington state farm field, the USDA said on July 29.

The discovery of 22 unapproved genetically modified (GMO) wheat plants has prompted an investigation by federal and state investigators, the third such discovery in three years.

A farmer found the GMO wheat in a field that has not been planted since 2015. The plants had been identified as being one of Monsanto’s experimental varieties “a few weeks ago,” a spokesman from the Washington State Department of Agriculture said.

The USDA is testing grain harvested from the farmer’s other wheat fields as a precaution, the agency said. Officials also reached out to at least one trade group earlier this week, and alerted importers on July 28.

The grain has not been traced in commercial supplies, USDA said in a statement.

There are currently no commercially approved genetically modified wheat varieties and incidences of rogue plants are rare. The first case was in 2013 in Oregon, which prompted buyers including South Korea and Japan to stop buying U.S. wheat. More unapproved wheat was found in Montana in 2014.

The U.S. FDA believes there is no threat to the food supply due to the small number of plants found and based on what is known about the GMO variety.

South Korea, the fifth largest market for U.S. wheat, said earlier on July 29 that the country will step up quarantine measures for U.S. milling and feed wheat shipments.

The discovery comes as the latest blow for the U.S. wheat market as prices hover near multi-year lows amid record-large stocks and stiff competition in global markets from low cost suppliers.

Monsanto helped to develop a test for MON 71700, the strain found in Washington state, which would be available to U.S. trading partners, the USDA said.

The variety was tested in limited field trials in the Pacific Northwest from 1998 to 2000, but was never commercialized, said Monsanto spokeswoman Christi Dixon.

The wheat found in Washington state is a slightly different strain than the one discovered in 2013, although both were developed to withstand applications of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide.

]]>https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/usda-confirms-unapproved-gmo-wheat-washington-state/feed/0Congress Rules on GMO Labeling May Pit States vs. Feds (Updated)https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/congress-rules-gmo-labeling-may-pit-states-vs-feds/
https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/congress-rules-gmo-labeling-may-pit-states-vs-feds/#commentsThu, 14 Jul 2016 16:42:42 +0000http://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/?post_type=article&p=17766U.S. Senate on July 7 voted 63-30 for a bill that would require GMO contents in foods to be displayed on applicable packaging

Partly to head off a potential patchwork of genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling laws from states, the U.S. Senate on July 7 voted 63-30 for a bill that would require GMO contents in foods to be displayed on applicable packaging using words, a website or phone number, or a Quick Response barcode that can be read by a smartphone. The U.S. House of Representatives concurred in bipartisan vote of 306-117 on July 14. The bill now goes to President Obama.

A federal bill could cause a food fight with states, as the bill as it stands now would preempt state GMO labeling laws. It also would give the USDA two years to devise rules telling companies how to label GMO ingredients.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did not vote for the Senate bill. Vermont’s own mandatory GMO labeling law went into effect July 1.

“It is not the business of Congress to overstep what the states have done,” Sen. Sanders said in a Fortune magazine article.

Connecticut was the first state with a GMO labeling law in 2013, and it included a trigger clause requiring four other states, one adjacent to its borders, to enact similar legislation. Maine signed a GMO labeling law in early January 2014, but it will only become effective if four contiguous states enact similar laws, which has yet to happen. New Hampshire and Massachusetts are considering such laws. Alaska has a law to label genetically modified salmon.

Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King initially supported moving the Senate bill ahead in a procedural vote on July 1, but the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association and other groups criticized their votes, saying the federal GMO bill is weaker than laws approved by Maine’s and other state’s legislatures. In the final vote on July 7, both senators changed their vote to “nay.”

Clarity or Confusion?Most corn, soybean, and sugar crops grown in the U.S. are from genetically-engineered seeds, according to USDA, Center for Food Safety, and other sources. But the U.S. Senate bill may not consider such items bioengineered foods when used as food ingredients like beet sugar and soybean oil. GMO corn also may be exempt because of vague language, critics say.

For example, the Senate bill says food that require labeling must contain genetic material modified through in vitro recombinant DNA techniques, meaning they would be modified in a way that can’t be replicated through typical breeding methods. The U.S. FDA has said that language will exempt foods containing oils and sugars which, when processed, no longer contain a genetic trace of the GMO crops from which they came.

Why Label?Reasons for labeling vary, but a consensus is that people simply want to know what is in their food. This is true with calorie and nutrient counts, as well as GMOs, which scientists in general have deemed safe to eat, but which some consumers still are wary about eating. Organic companies cannot by law use GMOs in their foods.

It will cost money to change labeling, some manufacturers argue. Plus there are some surveys that indicate a GMO label may cause consumers to avoid buying a product.

A June 13­–21 online survey of 1,665 primary shoppers by MSR Group and sponsored by the American Soybean Association (ASA) and other U.S. food and agriculture trade associations aimed to understand five common on-pack food labels. When consumers were asked about the GMO statements required by Vermont’s labeling law, 73 percent of respondents said they were less likely to buy foods with on-pack GMO disclosures. Some 36 percent perceived the food as less safe, 28 percent less healthful, 22 percent less nutritious, and 20 percent worse for the environment.

Vermont’s labeling law simply says, “partially produced with genetic engineering.”

The ASA and its partner associations issued a joint statement saying: “The survey demonstrates that the Vermont on-pack GMO labeling law that is effectively setting GMO labeling policy for interstate commerce is misleading to consumers and powerfully disparaging of a safe, environmentally appropriate technology.” It went on to say that the Senate bill would preempt the Vermont law and permit GMO disclosure that was not misleading.

Meanwhile, Pamela Bailey, president and CEO, Grocery Manufacturers Association, in supporting the Senate’s bill, said in a statement: “…consumers and small businesses in the state [Vermont] are already facing fewer products on the shelves and higher costs of compliance on small businesses.”

Rodale Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach, sent a letter to all members of the U.S. Senate in late June to carefully consider the implications of the bill on organic agriculture. “The bill was ostensibly about labeling, but it has become a vehicle for a broader attack on organic agriculture,” it read in part.

The fight over GMO labeling has been contentious and costly. For example, food and biotechnology companies spent about $101 million to oppose it in 2015, according to the Washington D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that cited Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz Co., Kellogg’s, Land O’Lakes, and General Mills as spending a combined $20.6 million to lobby against GMO labeling.

It was this statement that began a movement that included genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling initiatives. The first such “contains GM” labeling legislation (Act Relating to the Labeling of Food Produced with Genetic Engineering) was passed by Vermont and on July 1, 2016, the law goes into effect despite several failed federal attempts to block the law.

Along with the requirement to label GMs are some fears that consumers may stop purchasing these products. However, a recent study shows this may not be the case. The multi-year study revealed that GMO labeling would not act as a warning labels and scare consumers from buying products with GMO ingredients. Jane Kolodinsky, professor and chair of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont, conducted the research.

So far she has collected five years of data beginning in 2003. “What we found was an overwhelmingly majority of consumers still would like to see their products labeled. For the people who actually said they use labeling to make decisions, it’s over 90 percent of people support labeling,” explains Kolodinsky. “Here is what we do know: Study after study after study shows consumers would like to see their products labeled.”

However, Kolodinsky’s study found that the presence of a “contains GM” label will not increase peoples’ opposition to GMOs. So it appears, says Kolodinsky, who also conducted an extensive literature review, that it will not be a warning label.

“As an unbiased third party researcher at a university, I look for the evidence,” says Kolodinsky, who noted she could find no empirical evidence that GM labels will serve as a warning. “The label doesn’t change attitude. It simply informs a consumer of what’s in a product.”

The survey was conducted in Vermont and found that on average, across all five years of the study, 60 percent of Vermonters reported being opposed to the use of GMO technology in food production and 89 percent desire labeling of food products containing GMO ingredients.

While companies such as Campbells are preparing to create a new label that identifies GMO ingredients, other companies continue down the path to GMO free foods. In 2016, Del Monte announced that all its vegetables, fruit cups, and the majority of tomato products will be non-GMO—representing 154 products. In addition, the products are labeled as GMO-free. Campbells has also said it will not raise prices, another area of concern around anti-GMO labeling, and will absorb the cost as part of doing business.

One question that has been discussed around the GM labeling debate is will consumers be willing to pay a premium for GM foods and/or GM-free foods.

Kolodinsky says this has been a big worry of U.S. economists who have found that not a single study has found that people will pay a premium for GM products. In fact, she states, every single product has to have a significant discount in order to get consumers to purchase it.

Yet in a capitalist society, Kolodinsky says, people have perfect information and they vote with their dollar. “I know what’s in my food and this is how much I’m willing to pay for it. So there should be a new set price point for food in the GM labeling world. In other words, food should actually get cheaper for the consumer.”

The other argument of economists, she says, is that no one will demand GM at all and companies will just go GM free like the European Union did. “The genie is out of the bottle in the U.S.,” says Kolinsky. “Eighty percent of our crops are grown with GM seeds. So there is no way you can put that genie back in the bottle.”

Moving forward, Kolinsky believes people are going to start embracing GM labeling. “My prediction of what is going to happen is that labeling GM products is actually going to appease everyone. The proportion of the population that wants the information and will use it to not buy GM are going to do it,” says Kolodinsky. “The proportion of the population that really believes in GM seeds, the label will induce them to purchase more, and for the rest of the population that doesn’t use labels now, they’re not going to care.

“So basically labeling is going to level the playing field and the whole, I think, controversy over GM is going to go away because people will know what’s in their food, which is what the law was drafted on in the first place, that the U.S. population has a right to know how their food is produced,” continues Kolodinsky. “I believe that companies are gearing up with the idea that if this goes broader, they’ll be ready.”

Kolodinsky says the 2016 data has been collected and will be added. She then plans on conducting the survey again next year after the labels are on the shelves to determine if in fact the results of her empirical study prove true.

]]>https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/study-finds-gmo-label-will-not-act-warning-label/feed/2Quest to Label GMOs Marches on in Washingtonhttps://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/16051/
https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/16051/#respondSat, 12 Mar 2016 12:00:58 +0000http://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/?post_type=article&p=16051Food industry calls on federal government to pass legislation that would pre-empt Vermont’s labeling law

Vermont’s GMO labeling law set to take effect July 1, 2016 has spurred the food industry to action calling on the federal government to pass legislation that would pre-empt Vermont’s law, “Act Relating to the Labeling of Food Produced with Genetic Engineering.” The bill requires the food industry to identify on the product label if the product contains a genetically modified organism, or GMO. It’s estimated that today nearly 70 percent of all products are made with at least one GMO ingredient.

Just last week, Senate Republications passed a bill through the Agriculture Committee while the Republications are moving their Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act (SAFE) bill through channels. Meanwhile, Democrats who don’t support SAFE are moving their own bill coined the “Biotechnology Food Labeling and Uniformity Act.” Currently, this is the only bill that explicitly requires food manufactures to list the presence of GMOs on the product’s Nutrition Fact Panel.

According to Thomas Sullivan, a partner with the law firm Morgan Lewis, the real elephant in the room is the legislation from Vermont. Groups have come together to challenge the bill and one of the main grounds is as a First Amendment issue. “The issue there is whether the Vermont Act properly mandates certain content, speech content, by forcing manufactures to put the label on their product,” explains Sullivan.

He says a lot of these issues went to the Circuit Court in Vermont as manufacturers sought an injunction against the Act going into effect. The District Court denied the injunction. “So unless something changes, the legislation is going into effect July 1.”

An interesting element in the labeling debate is that more than 10 states have passed similar laws to Vermont but several of these states put a clause in their bills that they would not go into effect unless Vermont’s bill goes in to effect.

“If you are a food manufacturer there are two main issues,” says Sullivan. One, do you develop one label for Vermont and another label for everywhere else or do you bite the bullet and develop one label for the entire country?”

There is a potential domino effect for the food industry. If Vermont’s law goes into effect and then other states follow through, there are now labeling requirements in multiple states.

“So if you’re a manufacturer, it’s March now. There’s no resolution to this issue. You’re potentially facing a July 1 deadline in Vermont and the legal case is up before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” says Sullivan.

Campbell Soup Company is taking the route of one label and announced in January 2016 that they are working to become the first major food company to adopt food labels that will disclose GMO ingredients. The change in labeling is expected to take 12 to 18 months. Yet this is too long to meet the requirements of Vermont’s labeling law and ultimately other states’ as well.

Moving back Washington. The proposed bills are very vague. Some don’t define if the federal law would pre-empt state laws. Some don’t exactly define that labeling GMOs would be required. Some state bills require a smart label. Sullivan says it is unclear what the language will or should be but there has been talk about the FDA developing a symbol to identify GMO products. Interestingly, in 2001, the FDA issued guidance on GMO labeling and states they recognize there is not scientific evidence that GMO cause health problems.

Sullivan says that, in essence, the choice has essentially been taken out of the hands of the food companies. And there is one big question: What will be the scope of pre-emption? “This could really put manufacturers in a bind. They just want one label.”

When asked if this GMO labeling movement will raise product costs for consumers, Sullivan says it depends on the label requirements. He says another factor is potential changes in the food manufacturing process. If you have to keep ingredients segregated within a plant, it’s going to cost more money to produce the product.

One irony, says Sullivan is that GMOs were developed to help give more access to consumers for healthy foods. Yet the consumers who care about labeling are the ones who could pay more money for the food.

“One interesting question is there is a lot being written about the growing roles of consumer purchasing decisions but are these groups really representing the majority of people?” Sullivan askd. He wonders how real the demand actually is for certain kinds of labeling.

Regardless, GMO labeling is moving forward. It simply remains to be seen whether state laws will take effect first or a federal law would take effect and pre-empt states and whether or not food manufactures and consumer advocacy groups can agree on one, national GMO label.

Editor’s Note:4,000 chefs called on Senate to reject the latest version of the DARK Act on March 10.

]]>https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/16051/feed/0Campbell Soup Becomes First Major Company to Start GMO Labelinghttps://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/campbell-soup-supports-gmo-labeling/
https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/campbell-soup-supports-gmo-labeling/#respondFri, 08 Jan 2016 19:37:25 +0000http://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/?post_type=article&p=15105U.S. products will be labeled for the presence of ingredients derived from GMOs in response to growing calls for more transparency about contents in food

Campbell Soup Co. says it will label all its U.S. products for the presence of ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs), becoming the first major food company to respond to growing calls for more transparency about contents in food.

The company, which also makes Pepperidge Farm cookies and Prego pasta sauces, says it would withdraw from all efforts by groups opposing such measures.

Several activist groups have been pressuring food companies to be more transparent about the use of ingredients, especially GMO-derived ones, amid rising concerns about their effects on health and the environment.

Several big companies such as PepsiCo Inc., Kellogg Co., and Monsanto Co. have resisted such calls and have spent millions of dollars to defeat GMO-labeling ballot measures in states such as Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and California, saying it would add unnecessary costs.

Monsanto Co. said in a statement that it sells seeds to farmers, and does not manufacture or sell food products from crops grown from those seeds.

The six biggest agrochemical and biotech seed companies—Monsanto, Dupont, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience, BASF Plant Science and Syngenta AG—spent more than $21.5 million to help defeat a 2012 California proposition labeling proposition, according to state election data.

Advocacy group Just Label It says Campbell’s move was a step closer to reaching the goal of a federally crafted national GMO labeling solution.

Campbell says that if a federal solution is not achieved in some time, it was prepared to label all its U.S. products for the presence of ingredients that were derived from GMOs and would seek guidance from the FDA and approval by the USDA.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which represents more than 300 food companies opposed to mandatory GMO labeling, says it respected the rights of individual members to communicate with their customers in whatever manner they deem appropriate.

However, the GMA says it was “imperative” that Congress acted immediately to prevent the expansion of a costly patchwork of state labeling laws that would ultimately hurt consumers who can least afford higher food prices.

Kellogg and Pepsi were not immediately available to comment on Campbell’s move.

Campbell said in July that it would stop adding monosodium glutamate, or MSG, to its condensed soups for children and use non-genetically modified ingredients sourced from American organic farms in its Campbell’s organic soup line for kids.

The company also said it would remove artificial colors and flavors from nearly all of its North American products by July 2018.

A panel of scientists is disputing a World Health Organization report published earlier this year that concluded glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer and main ingredient in Monsanto Co.’s Roundup herbicide, is probably carcinogenic to humans.

The 16-member panel, assembled by Intertek Scientific and Regulatory Consultancy, will present its findings to the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis on Monday, aiming to publish the study at a later date after peer review. Monsanto paid Intertek for the panel’s work.

The group says that the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) misinterpreted or incorrectly weighted some of the data it reviewed and ignored other data before classifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, according to an abstract of its findings.

“Thus, none of the results from a very large database, using different methodologies, provides evidence of, or a potential mechanism for, human carcinogenesis,” states the abstract.

The panel’s assessment is similar to that of the European Food Safety Authority, which last month said glyphosate was not likely carcinogenic.

IARC was not immediately available for comment.

The U.S. government says the herbicide is considered safe. In 2013, Monsanto requested and received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for increased tolerance levels for glyphosate, which is mainly used to kill weeds in fields planted with corn and soybeans that are genetically modified to survive it.

But concerns about glyphosate on food have been a hot topic of debate in the U.S. recently and contributed to the passage in Vermont last year of the country’s first mandatory labeling law for foods that are genetically modified.

Critics say that industry-linked scientists are downplaying the risk to human health and trying to discredit the IARC report by casting doubt on some of the scientific studies that it reviewed.

Ten of the 16 scientists on the Intertek panel have been consultants for Monsanto in the past and two others are former Monsanto employees, according to a roster published on Monsanto’s website.

“IARC’s goal was just to score the cancer hazard, that’s it. They’ve looked at all the data and they have really convincing evidence,” says Jennifer Sass, senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council.

“What this panel is trying to do is death by a thousand cuts. They’re taking a good stack of evidence and starting to hack through it to try to kill it,” she says.